I took Greek at Prairie Bible College in 1975. In our first year of Greek we used New Testament Greek for Beginners by Machen. In second year Greek we used A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament by Dana and Mantey.

I can attest to the veracity of the old adage “use it or lose it!”

After graduating from Prairie I did not keep up on Greek and I lost it.

A couple years ago some people asked me to teach them Greek. We decided to use Basics of Biblical Greek by Mounce as our textbook and I tried to say one step ahead of my students. Thankfully, it was not like starting from scratch. I was surprised at how quickly things came together for me.

Since 1984, I have been teaching Phonetics and Language Acquisition Principles at the Missionary Training Center for New Tribes Mission. We use comprehension based language acquisition methods in our training program. I realized quickly that comprehension based language learning is light years ahead of the rote memorization of vocabulary and paradigms for learning Greek which we used at Prairie! I only wish that we would have had Dr. Randall Buth’s materials when trying to learn Greek back in the 1970’s!

As we worked through Mounce’s textbook, I was determined to apply some of the principles of comprehension based language learning to make it a bit easier to learn vocabulary and paradigms. In talking to the students, they seemed very encouraged in how much they were able to comprehend as we progressed from chapter to chapter.

Bob Nyberg wrote:Since 1984, I have been teaching Phonetics and Language Acquisition Principles at the Missionary Training Center for New Tribes Mission. We use comprehension based language acquisition methods in our training program. I realized quickly that comprehension based language learning is light years ahead of the rote memorization of vocabulary and paradigms for learning Greek which we used at Prairie! I only wish that we would have had Dr. Randall Buth’s materials when trying to learn Greek back in the 1970’s!

Yes, I have. New Tribes Bible Institute uses Randall Buth's materials. Some of the students that come from there through our missionary training program here have gone through the Greek course that uses Dr. Buth's materials. I have had a chance to look at his materials which I borrowed from a student who lived next to my house. The students who have taken that course are really encouraged at how much they are able to comprehend so quickly. Since it is comprehension based, it dovetails nicely with the principles that we teach here in our language acquisition classes. Having learned Greek originally by means of rote memorization and having taught comprehension based language learning principles, I'm sold on that way of learning. Even supplementing Mounce's textbook with comprehension based learning was better than just rote memorization in my opinion.

jeffreyrequadt wrote:Could you give some examples of how you supplemented Mounce's BBG with more whole-language comprehension stuff?

You could always pick out the Greek students at Bible college. Everywhere we went, we carried our vocab words on a little ring to memorize/review them. In the line at the dining hall all the Greek students were flipping through their ring of memory cards. But that’s not the way a child learns language. I haven’t seen many toddlers carrying around rings of memory cards! LOL

One of the principles that we teach in our language acquisition course is “never learn a word by itself.” Always learn it in the context of a sentence.

A great tool for doing that is something called T.P.R. which stands for Total Physical Response. For T.P.R. ideas check out: http://www.tpr-world.com/

Here’s how T.P.R. might work for learning nouns in Spanish. I find a bilingual Spanish speaker who would be willing to help me learn some nouns.

The first step is “point and listen.” It goes like this:

I point to an object and he tells me in Spanish what it is using a whole sentence like “that is a ball.” I keep adding objects one at a time. I also go back to the previous ones until I feel like I am comprehending the nouns. At this point I am not comprehending the whole sentence structure but the nouns are beginning to make sense. I’m in control so I can go as fast or slow as I want. When I have 5 objects that I think that I know then I ask him to quiz me.

The second step is “listen and point.” It goes like this:

He will ask a question in Spanish like “where is the ball?” I respond by pointing at the ball. He tells me right or wrong depending on how I do. Of course I have to ask him first what the Spanish words for right and wrong are. He asks me these questions at random so that I’m not just following the sequence of objects in order.

The goal is to learn from 15 to 20 objects. At the end, I will record him quizzing me (at random) so that I can review the objects later.

You can also do this for adjectives, and verbs.

So to learn the vocab words in Mounce, I tried to apply this technique using PowerPoint. I tried to find pictures or clip art for the nouns such as angel, man, world, heart, etc. Some of the abstract nouns were a bit of a challenge!

So in PowerPoint I had pictures of these objects – let’s say 5 nouns. Let’s say the first object was ἄνθρωπος. I had a picture of a man and a sentence in Greek that says “This is a man.” We kept going over the pictures and Greek sentences until we felt like we knew the objects.

Then as a quiz I had a second PowerPoint. The first slide would have the question written in Greek “Where is the man?” Then you click and all the pictures disappear except for the picture of the man. Also the question fades out and a statement in Greek fades in saying “This is the man.”

Okay, that’s a REALLY long explanation. But that kind of gives you an idea of how we learned much of the vocab that goes with each chapter in Mounce.

Hi Bob,
Actually I am a little familiar with TPR. I have had a little experience teaching English to students in Africa, and as an elementary educator I use lots of different strategies for teaching reading and writing, and I can't remember the last time I had students learn vocab in isolation. Like you said, it doesn't create retention. Very few dendrites getting created. But I am curious what other things you have actually done other than TPR to incorporate comprehension into the Mounce. Would you follow Mounce and just incorporate better vocabulary comprehension? Did you use music? Any games? Anything to help with how cases work? I've seen the Randall Buth stuff and believe in it, but I like to hear how people use a more traditional method but still make it comprehensible.
Jeff

jeffreyrequadt wrote:I am curious what other things you have actually done other than TPR to incorporate comprehension into the Mounce. Jeff

I also made some translation exercises that corresponded with the TPR for each chapter. In the earlier chapters they were pretty simple, but got more complex.

For example, here’s the English translations for the Greek sentences I created for chapter 11:

This is the brother.
This is the man (husband).
This is the assembly (church).
This is the hope (expectation).
This is the light.
This is the mother.
This is the father.
This is the faith (belief).
This is the will (desire).
This is the water.

Here’s the English translations for the Greek sentences I created for chapter 16:
I am hearing the man.
I am seeing the man.
I have (am holding) the man.
I am loosing (destroying) the man.
I am believing the man.

You (s.) are hearing the man.
He (she, it) is hearing the man.
We are hearing the man.
You (pl.) are hearing the man.
They are hearing the man.

This is the blind man.
This is the law of the man.
This is the face of the man.
This is the joy of the man.

Where is the blind man?
Where is the law of the man?
Where is the face of the man?
Where is the joy of the man?

Where are the blind men?
I am seeing the ruler, and I am hearing the law.
We are believing the gospel, and we have joy.
You (s.) are hearing the scriptures, and you (s.) have joy.
He is seeing the apostles, then he is believing the gospel.
We are loosing the blind men, then they have joy.
You (pl.) are hearing the word, and you (pl.) are believing the Christ.
He is hearing the apostles, and he is believing the words of them.
They are not believing the scriptures, but we are hearing the apostles.
You (s.) are loosing the blind man, then you (s.) are seeing the joy of him.
They are hearing the blind men, but they are not seeing the faces of them.

Please excuse the incorrect accent marks. I remember Machen had rules as to how Greek is supposed to be accented. I was in a hurry trying to develop these PowerPoints and stay ahead of my students so I didn’t have time to be accurate with the accent marks. I’m sure that there are other spelling/grammar errors too. I guess if I were going to teach Greek again, I would clean up all these files. But at the present time, I don’t really have any plans on teaching Greek again. Actually, it was kind of a fluke as to how that all came about in the first place.